It may come as a bit of a shock when, even in a high-tech age, a ragged old adage manages to click. The United Progressive Alliance government may be biting its collective fingernails because its plans for making a law out of the parliament (prevention of disqualification) amendment bill, 2006 with all possible speed have been hit badly by the president returning it. Without a doubt, the lessened speed is a direct result of more haste. The UPA?s haste to push the bill by making it an ordinance through an adjournment of the budget session was rather unseemly. It was a direct result of the office-of-profit controversy that erupted around the disqualification of Ms Jaya Bachchan. The government?s actions were perceived as desperate fire-fighting in an effort ? pointless as it turned out in the case of Ms Sonia Gandhi ? to stall the Election Commission from continuing with the same logic in the case of a number of other members of parliament, including the speaker.

By returning the bill for ?reconsideration?, the president, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, has emphasized the gravity of all that the bill represents, by both commission and omission. Mr Kalam?s message, that there should be no ad hoc approach in determining an office of profit points to the greatest flaw in the way all governments have dealt with the issue. The president has suggested that a settled interpretation ? presumably opposed to a series of time-serving ones ? of Article 102 is needed, so that a just application of the law can be transparently made in all cases. That would, of course, rob the issue of its political sting. But more alarmingly for the UPA, the president has expressed doubts about the retrospective clause in the bill, which would exempt the MPs regarding whom the EC has received complaints. The bill has been delayed in its passage by the return, and much of the point of the haste has been already defeated. The EC might proceed with the complaints in the interim. According to the Constitution, the president would sign the bill even if it goes back to him unchanged. But he has expressed his doubts on an issue which has direct repercussions on the government?s credibility. Ignoring them will cost the UPA government in terms of image, good faith and the claim of having settled a contentious issue. This is equally, if not more, serious than the uncertainty of MPs in the grey area of the office-of-profit controversy.